


Kind of nice

by marieincolour



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Curtain Fic, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Paralysis, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-18
Updated: 2012-08-18
Packaged: 2017-11-13 14:57:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/504729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marieincolour/pseuds/marieincolour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p> Dean + monster venom = a very rough summer. More can be found in the prompt. </p>
            </blockquote>





	Kind of nice

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N:** I have a tendency to do this, I know, but I got  _badly_ side tracked on this one. I needed a place for them to settle down, and then I fell in love with the house. It's a great little house, though!  
> I could have taken the medical stuff further than I did, but.. It doesn't make for very good reading, so I didn't. Having had some experience with situations like these (though obviously not caused by monster venom) I do know that the medical procedures and generally just keeping someone alive and clean and comfortable is about 90% of everything you do in times like these. The remaining 10% go towards trying to keep sane. This is by no means the best thing I've written. It's badly paced and awkward and deserves better, but I can't seem to improve it (yet). I hope you'll enjoy it anyway.  
> Written for the [summer themed Dean H/C comment meme.](http://hoodie-time.livejournal.com/679457.html) Prompt can be found [here](http://hoodie-time.livejournal.com/679457.html?thread=9264929#t9264929).
> 
> I don't own Supernatural. I'm merely borrowing, and I'm certainly not making any money.

  
It's a downwards spiral so powerful and dizzying it makes Sam want to grab onto everything normal and hold the fuck onto it.   


  
At first, it's just the knowledge of what's to come. It's Dean, flat in the back of the car with a damp towel over his face with a breathing pattern so even and measured Sam knows his head is sending stars and sparks like a fireworks display. So Sam waits, his hands on the wheel of a car he doesn't even _like_ all that much, and Dean takes a half hour nap while he tries to shake off cops and local heroes and whatever the hell else is following them. 

  
An ancient book with crumpled, yellowed pages burns hot like a poker in his bag stuffed in the trunk. He already knows what it says, but the temptation to read it again, to make _sure_ makes him itch.

  
He turns them north, and feels his innermost secrets unravel slowly. It doesn't hurt like he thought it would. 

-

  
They take a break around the fifth hour. At first so Sam can wobble out of the car on stiff legs and achy knees to stretch and take a leak, but then it turns into a run to the nearest shop for ginger ale and painkillers, because while Sam's got himself in front of a very tempting set of bushes, there's a groan from the car, a squeak of ancient hinges, and then a bout of puking so desperate and miserable sounding that Sam gags over the greenery in sympathy.

  
Sam wants to kill the goddamned thing again. Watch the head fall off. _Again._

-

  
“Hey, Dean?”

  
“Yeah” Dean sighs from the back where he's got his head wedged into a corner between the seats and the door. He's almost grey, skin clammy and sickly looking. There's red seeping through the bandage on his upper chest already, peeking out over the edge of a sweat soaked t-shirt. 

  
“You'll.. You'll let me know when you start feeling worse, right?”

  
It's such a stupid question, because while the future is grey and dim and not written yet, there are hints. Like a summary written by a person who's read the book but isn't allowed to give away the plot. Vague lines of things that _must_ come, and of things that weigh heavy on Sam. Responsibilities. Hope.

  
Dean doesn't dignify his question with a response other than “Uuuugh.”, which he takes to mean “Whatever, man. You'll know.”

  
He reaches the little dirt road around the ninth hour. Somewhere around it, anyway, because he hasn't been counting. He's been driving, thoughts wheeling through his head at the speed of light. 

Dean's slept, for the most part, but there's a bag on the floor with a tight knot, and the windows are all open despite the cool air outside because fresh, cold air is a thousand times better than the smell that fills the car the moment they're closed.

He's throwing that bag out the moment they stop. 

Almost that moment, anyway, because first.. First he has to go get the key. 

  
The little white house turns up out of the forest as he rounds the last turn, the Impala bouncing and jumping on the uneven gravel road in a way that has Dean groaning in pain and confusion in the back seat. He's hoping the confusion isn't permanent. That he'll sleep it off tonight. That he'll wake up without vomiting up his spine and keep his eyes open and clear without tearing up, so he can.. So he can what? 

  
So he can die in peace? Starve to death happily? Ride it out and get all better?

  
The key is right where he left it, under the cellar door (of the kind that leans crookedly against the sides of the house), on top of the stone wall that creates the ancient foundation the whole thing leans on. There's a bottle of white spirit there, and a pair of gardening gloves. Ancient, stiff with mold and age. He doesn't know which of them they belonged to. His hands were smaller then. Behind it lies the old key. Round, silvery. A bit of rust on one side where it's been in a puddle of rainwater. 

  
Dean's gotten to his feet by the time he's unlocking the door, waiting to hear the click of a lock you have to punch and kick and finally beg to unlock, and the door opens. Slowly, catching on a faded rug.

“We squatting?” Dean calls, one hand trailing the roof of the car, the other wiping off spit from around his mouth. Seemingly unaware that Sam must have known this place was here to drive so far into the woods.

  
“Something like that” Sam mumbles as he bends his head to duck under the slightly low door frame. _He should fix that._

His heart throbs with things that were to happen here, but never did. Marvels at the way things never turn out the way he thought they would, and wonders why he would keep this secret. Why it felt so important to keep it to himself. 

He watches dust dance in the sunshine over the kitchen table and forgets all about it.

-

  
There's an envelope on the kitchen table. The pale blue kitchen table she painted that last summer they were here. The vase she put little white flowers in still stands next to the kitchen sink. Unwashed.

  
_Sam._ The paper reads. 

_Jess would have wanted you to enjoy this._

  
_Love._

  
It's not signed, but he knows it's from her mother. Underneath is a stack of envelopes, printed around a year ago from the date in the top corners. Electrical bills, receipts, utilities, that kind of thing. All pre-paid. The name of ownership of the house flashes the same as the one on the drivers license he's kept hidden for years now. That he's never used, for fear of it being tracked. This place.. He doesn't know if he could stand it if it was taken away. He ignores the stab of fear that grows in him at the thought that Jess' mom must have seen. Noticed.

There are other things on his mind. 

  
Dean stumbles into the house after him moments later, heavy boots tripping over the threshold. 

  
“Where are we?” he asks. 

  
“Home” Sam says, and he pulls out the summer duvet Jess used to bring outside to sit on while she'd play her guitar, the one missing two strings. It's orange and brown, a horrible leftover from an era long past. Dean wrinkles his nose as Sam pushes past him out into the warm sunshine in the garden. The grass needs cutting. It folds softly as he spreads the duvet out, shaking off dust and old pieces of grass from the last time he did this. It feels like he's introducing Dean to a part of his own life where he's domesticated and housebroken, and it's not all that unpleasant apart from the knowledge that he's doing this to insert _something_ good in their lives. He's hoping a home will weigh up what's to come.

  
Dean's stumbling down the front steps behind him, still in his sweaty t-shirt and jeans, but having left the boots on the porch. He's barefoot, and he walks carefully. Like he's afraid of stepping on pinecones and prickly plants with soft skin used to wearing boots.

“Lie down” Sam says, and his voice isn't as awkward or as unkind as he'd feared. “I'll get the bedrooms sorted so we'll have somewhere to sleep tonight.”

  
Maybe Dean thinks he leaves straight away, he doesn't know. He stands on the top of the stairs, hands deep in his pocket as he watches his brother collapse in a controlled sort of way down to the duvet, half on his side and half on his back with his head thrown back. His face is a grimace of aches and discomfort, but he allows himself to be told to rest and nap. 

And that worries Sam more than anything else, even as he unfolds ancient duvet covers gone soft with use, while he wipes down furniture and hoovers the floors and beds. 

Everything is just as he left it all that time ago. Exactly the same, not even as dusty as he'd expected. It takes him time to get the duvet covers on, fiddly little bows and ties instead of buttons or zips. Dean's bed is pink. His own is purple. They both smell faintly of lavender and sun dried fabric, and there are neat little folds down the center of the duvets from where they've been folded in the closet for years.

Duvets. 

“ _It gets cold in the winter” Jess had said, her hands on three sets of down duvets. “You'll thank me. Trust me.”_

  
He sighs heavily, imagines the air leaving his mouth with a trail of ghosts and bad memories so they'll be out of his head and gone forever, and stomps down the narrow, bright blue stairs to find his brother and make sure he's okay. 

  
Dean sleeps, cotton fabric dry and warm on his chest. His face is relaxed now, breathing even and calm. His fist is curled up around it, and some of the fingers twitch. Just a little bit, only once, as an insect lands on them. Sam wedges a note between them.

  
_“Back in an hour or two. -Sam.”_

  
It's not a trip he wants to take. Half of it is nice – stocking up a house is a dull task to anyone but Sam, because the novelty hasn't worn off to him yet. Buying everything from ketchup to toilet paper to M&M's to beer and ginger ale, and absolutely everything in between is a hint of normality to come. Preparing to cook dinner at home, choosing body wash he'll keep for more than a day before he leaves it in the shower of a random motel room. It's nice. It feels nice. It feels.. Ominous and like the price he's paying for it – Dean's paying for it – is too high. 

  
The second half isn't as nice. He sneaks around the back to the staff entrance to the local ER, and while the trip itself doesn't take him more than twenty minutes, he's got almost two bin bags full of stuff in his hands when he leaves. There's a tense moment as a nurse smiles at him, blonde hair and blue eyes and _way_ too stereotypical, but he shrugs the shoulder holding up one of the bags and mutters “trash day”. She grins and blows smoke out both nostrils like a dragon. 

  
Dean's sitting at the kitchen table when he comes back – a cloth held in one hand with a layer of dark grey dust on it, like he's been wiping down surfaces and then got lost in thought. His eyes are stuck on two dead flies in the windowsill. 

  
“Hey” Sam says, leaning one hip against the kitchen sink just inside the doorway to the little room. 

“I went for supplies.”

Something flashes in Dean's eyes, but he nods. 

“Need help carrying it in?”

Sam nods, like he can't imagine having to carry in five bags of groceries on his own. Will keep nodding until Dean stops offering. 

It's almost like a summer holiday, he thinks while he's stacking things in cupboards and stuffing them into the small fridge in the corner of the kitchen. The one that hums like it thinks it's really a boat engine, clunking happily at being used and plugged in. Almost. If not for the heavy cloud of future that's hanging over the both of them that they're both trying to ignore. 

  
“Steaks?” Dean asks, thumbing the white paper wrapped tightly around the meat Sam picked up. 

“You got a barbecue in this hovel?”

“Don't call my house a hovel. You live here now.”

There's a slight pause as Dean swallows.

  
“Yeah?”

His voice is thin, kind of hesitant. 

“Legally?”

Sam nods, smiling a little at the entirely _freaked out_ expression crossing Dean's face, and realizes that Dean hasn't lived in a house without fear of getting evicted or thrown out since he was four. 

  
Sam dusts and hoovers the rest of the house that afternoon. It's been a while since he's had to, and he'd forgotten that he enjoys watching dust disappear under his hand. Everything's dirty. The windows have a fine layer of dust on them, too, and dingy brown streaks from autumn rain and wind that whirls up the earth outside, but he'll tackle the outside tomorrow. Work on the lawn, trim a few bushes. Wash the windows. That kind of thing. It feels really fucking important to get the crass cut and the windows washed. Like he can keep both their heads above water by doing everything right.

  
Dean's flat out on the off white sofa in the living room, his face flushed and skin looking slightly greasy and sweaty even from across the room. 

He tips to his side a little when Sam sits on the outer part of the cushion, and they end up hip to hip. Hazy green eyes focus on him, slowly. Blinking slower than usual. When they close Sam can see the white of the eye. 

“Tired, huh?”

Dean nods, one hand falling to his forehead. 

“Head hurts?”

Another little nod.

“I've got some advil right here. It should get the fever down, too. I'm going to finish the bathroom and make sure we've got hot water, and then I'll start on dinner, all right? You up for some food?”

  
Dean swallows hard, but he nods anyway. 

  
Sam's hopeful Dean's stomach has settled by the time he's got dinner ready. Dean seems hopeful, too, and he manages about a quarter of what he normally eats. Then he braves a little more, and smiles at Sam. An open, pale-faced smile that says too clearly “Success! Didn't puke”. And that just doesn't make Sam all that thrilled, but he'll take what he can get. 

  
Dean's hand trails the back of the couch as he walks back into the tiny living room. Sam starts digging for a remote control to the little TV in the corner, and finally settles down in the corner of the couch. His own feet on the table, and Dean's feet stuck under his butt to warm his toes. It's... A thing. Weird, probably, but it's _their_ thing. Dean used to do this all the time. Sam would read, and Dean would stick cold toes under Sam to warm them. It's nice. Just.. Nice. 

  
It's his Dean, who isn't really larger than life. Just slightly cold and shivery on his end of the couch, watching commercials and bitching about how many there are. In his – their – living room, and just for a moment Sam allows himself to enjoy it.

  
-

  
It's an old house. Around 120 years old, and there are creaks and moans as the wood settles at night. Sam's used to them, they fold into the corners of his head like they're always there, and Dean seems too tired to care by the time Sam pushes him into the pink bed on the upper story. Slanted roofs and low doorways up there make it rougher on Sam, but he can deal until Dean's settled and happy in one of the smaller bedrooms. There are three all together, and Sam's got plans for the one downstairs. 

He supposes it was an office at one point, but it's got a bed now. An old fashioned metal bed Jess used to dress up as a couch, and a large bookshelf. It'll double as a bedroom easily. 

  
He puts the bin bags in there. Then he closes the door tightly like it'll keep the inevitable away and cleans up the kitchen after their dinner, spending an amazingly long time scrubbing away the grease splatter on the stove top.

There are three books in his book bag now, burning impatiently for him to read them.

So he does. Meticulously, with a little pink marker and a notebook to write down the most important things, and when he goes to bed almost three hours later he feels a little calmer. Like he found a ledge to cling to on his way down from a cliff.

It's such a Winchester way to cope. He's got a fucking _plan._

  
Time moves in bulks, then slows entirely. The next morning shows Dean stumbling down the stairs on knees that seem to want to buckle, and the duvet slips from his fingers when he tries to pick it up and take it outside. Sam watches him from the corner of his eye, and five minutes later he spreads it out for him on the freshly mowed grass. He doesn't see Dean curling up in the spot of sun, but he finds him there half an hour later, fast asleep and barefoot again. 

  
Time slows just when Dean's knees give out, or when his arm trembles at the effort of opening the car door. Then it hurries away again while Dean's walking happily across the garden or wrestling open an ancient bottle of cherry rum he and Jess made years ago. The smell alone sends them reeling with dizziness and laughter, but the moment hurries by so fast Sam almost doesn't have time to hold onto it. Almost. 

  
By the end of the week, Dean tells him he feels like when you wake up in the morning and your hands have that weak feeling, where your arm strains and itches with sleep but can't grasp anything. Can barely make a fist. Only unlike most mornings, it never goes away.

He struggles upright out of chairs, thighs trembling with the effort, and Sam hears him slipping in the shower at least once. 

  
Sam mows the lawn again and cleans out the chimney. Chops wood and prepares for fall with hurried movements and frantic energy. 

  
He finds Dean still in bed one Monday morning. He's restocked the kitchen, been to the shops and tried (and failed) to make friends with the bag of bones-cat that keeps sneaking around the corner of the house. Dean's still in bed. Half dressed, one sock drawn clumsily up over the elastics of his sweat pants. Something about it makes Sam's adam's apple double in size, and his guts squirm uncomfortably. He doesn't want to watch his brother decay in front of his eyes.

“Looks like you could use some help, huh?”

  
He doesn't mean for it to come out so.. Condescendingly. Like he's talking to someone _sick._ Dean nods, closing his eyes briefly and opening them to display green eyes shining with fever. Sam puts a hand to his forehead and sighs. Dean's been running a low grade fever ever since _that night._

“Advil first.” he says finally, but Dean's hands are having trouble grasping the glass. 

“'s early” Dean mumbles. “My hands haven't woken up yet.”

  
Sam steadies him and doesn't reply. 

  
They start walking everywhere together. Not because either one of them have gotten clingy, but because Dean's knees buckle under the pressure of his own weight. Sam keeps his hands under his arms, moments away from strapping around his chest entirely to hold him up should it be needed. 

They walk slowly, shuffling on feet that never seen to leave the ground entirely. In distances measured from sitting place to sitting place. To the garden for a bit of sun, back to the living room because it's cloudy. Sam talks about it like it's nothing. In a happy tone of voice that only disguises the fact that he'd be crying otherwise. 

  
Wednesday night is the first night Sam doesn't make Dean brave the stairs, and rather than complaining, Dean nods over his porridge. With bananas and cinnamon, because Sam's a nostalgic bastard and can only cook a few things. 

  
By Thursday morning he's no longer just a little brother, and Dean can't pretend anymore. It's hard to pretend when you've just been hauled out of the shower and someone is putting on your socks for you. Makes it difficult to push reality away, and right now reality is that there's a caretaker and a patient. Sam folds the elastics of the new pair of sweats he bought last week down over the lining of the socks and feels like he'll drown any moment.

Dean's arm is heavy and weak around his neck when he takes him into the garden. Dead weight against his muscles, and they scream with the effort. It feels like they're walking down a long list of defeats. Of little moments where it hits you that you're holding a spoon for someone else to eat, or that you're taking an adult to the bathroom. It's not glamorous or sweet or _all right_ in any way. It hurts and it's dirty and shitty and depressing, and it presses on Sam's need to be alone and Dean's need for a dignity that just isn't within reach. They're stuck in a loop that does _nothing_ but tell them how Dean's body is failing him bit by bit, making them resent each other and love each other even more at the same time, because Sam doesn't want to lose Dean, and Dean clings to whatever he's got these days.

  
Dean sleeps, sun warming the cotton of his clothes. 

  
Sam prepares. Is endlessly _there._ He reads, he cleans. Tries to convince himself they're ready in a kind of desperate way to tell himself that everything is _fine._ Will be _all right._

  
When Sam wakes up that following Tuesday it's raining. It's not that unusual, they're pretty far north, but it feels like a sign. Dean's still, quiet and warm under his yellow duvet when he enters the room, but his eyes are open. Blinking lethargically at him. Still fevered. The water bottle on the side of his bed hasn't been touched, and Sam sighs. 

“Can't” Dean whispers, following his gaze. “S'ry.”

Dean slurs and mumbles, and Sam knows it's not his fault. Knows his lips are numb and weak like they're asleep, just like the rest of him. He nods. Shrugs it off.

“It'll get better” he says, because being too optimistic seems like his way to handle things. Dean doesn't call him out on it. 

  
It's the second morning in a row that finds Sam doing la big pile of laundry before he's changed out of his PJ's. And that's just something Sam isn't sure how to handle. 

It's the first morning Dean has trouble swallowing the porridge he's made, and it's the first time in his life Sam has held out a napkin for someone to spit into.

  
It's the first morning he fiddles with foley catheter kits and nasogastric tubes and IV's, and his head looks through memorized pages of nursing school literature for help and guidance and confirmation that he's doing it right. And yet, despite knowing he's doing the right thing, and that he's helping it doesn't feel like it. Dean winces and tears up and coughs weakly, fingers twitching like he wants it all to stop and go away and feel like a human being again, and Sam feels like a villain where he's standing in his fourth pair of sterilized gloves because he keeps pinching the bridge of his nose like a moron or opening the tabs of paper to get to them in the wrong order, effectively spoiling them before they can be used.

  
“Sorry” he mumbles. Dean closes his eyes. The light from the window bounces off the thin tube taped across his cheek. 

Sam closes the velcro around his leg. Sighs. Helps him get dressed. 

  
He feels like he's too far in over his head and while he thought he could do this, he really _can't._ Dean's head is a heavy weight as he walks to the living room to start the day. Heavy and limp, slipping down his arm and shoulder with every movement they make. He straightens out legs and arms until they look comfortable, stacks pillows under them like the manuals say to do and massages the hands so they wont cramp in on themselves.

They do anyway, and Dean looks so _sick._ Muscle tissue atrophies so much faster than Sam ever thought possible, withering away under a depleted layer of body fat, and his brother looks smaller.

Not deadly small, just.. Slighter.

Or maybe it's just the lack of movements in a body that lives, but only on the inside. Maybe it's all in Sam's head, because for once he's actually really _watching_ Dean. He doesn't know.

  
It doesn't matter. It hurts. He looks fragile and scared, eyes blinking open only to close against reality moments later, and it's all Sam can do to keep hope alive in the both of them. Not to give into temptation and not touch Dean again for fear of hurting him or doing something wrong. Working against every instinct in his body that keeps telling him to hide under the couch or just.. Walk away and pretend it isn't happening. He feels horrible for even thinking it, but helping Dean doesn't exactly make him feel good, either. 

  
By the end of the first week Sam hasn't slept more than an hour at a go, and it's all done on a mattress on the floor next to Dean. Dean doesn't speak. Blinks once for yes, twice for no, and it hurts. So much. Sam is all alone, every decision and every responsibility on him. Dean is alone, weary eyes following his movements but unable to voice his opinion, completely trapped in his own mind where Sam's intuition fails him. The early mornings are the hardest, and Sam finds himself curling up behind his brother like they're kids in a motel again, burying his face in blonde hair that smells faintly of the mint shampoo he bought them and grows sleepy in the warmth of Dean's fever. 

  
Sam hangs the bags of IV fluids and flesh colored blend that goes through the tube from a coat rack. Their bathroom looks more like a wash room at a hospital than the shabby little thing in their ancient house with flowery wallpaper. He wants it to be full of half wilted flowers and towels with footprints on them and a hamper bursting with dirty laundry. Not.. Strewn with medical equipment and empty kits and gloves. 

  
By the end of the second week they've nearly run out of supplies, and Sam has had to leave Dean to the tender mercies of the cat he tricked into the house a few days before to restock. It's a tense hour away, and when he comes back to find Dean with his eyes wide open and staring around the room as if searching for something, painfully awake and alert, his heart almost breaks at the same time as it hardens. He thinks of the possibility of someone coming in here. A man, an intruder, a fucking _wasp_ for that matter, and it sends him into a crying jag that lasts no longer than 30 seconds over the kitchen sink, which leaves his eyes red and his nose stuffed for hours after. For all that he's been trying to keep his brother from getting bedsores for the past _however_ long the idea hadn't crossed his mind that Dean's defenseless, and that his safety is resting solely on Sam's shoulders. That everything is. 

  
He doesn't take joy in the house or in the spots of sun or the flowers in the garden, even if he tries to make Dean enjoy it all, because that's not what this house is right now. It's limitations. It's bathtubs where the towel slides down and Dean's head ends up clunking against cold, white metal. It's thresholds and steps that Sam has to walk up and down with the heaviest burden in the world in his arms, and it's cushions that aren't firm enough to hold up a body that keeps sliding downwards. Beds that are too low and almost succeed in breaking his back, and wooden floors he can never get clean enough. He feels like the biggest hypocrite when he feels disappointed that Dean doesn't enjoy the sunshine or the flowery cushions in the living room Jess picked out with scary precision. 

  
Sam's been confronted with this kind of fragility of existence before, but he's never stopped to think about how _human_ we all are. How basic needs are there, _always there_ underneath a glamorous exterior. He can't kill this with guns or fire. All he can do is fiddle endlessly and obsessively with the schedule written in blue on the inside of a cereal box which is now taped to the kitchen wall, and everything in the world that isn't about keeping Dean alive fades into unimportance. Music, art, TV-shows, cars, what he looks like, how to save the world this time around or what kind of girls he prefers, it's all irrelevant.

He's used to saving lives, but he's used to it speeding past in a blur of adrenaline, not dragging out and sucking him dry. He feels the weight of it all on him now, heavy and cloying and everlasting in things he hates. That make him want to cry and laugh hysterically and run away (possibly screaming) to get Dad _immediately._

  
Time slows and slows. Hurries feverishly when something he dreads comes closer on his schedule. Slows again when he's there, doing it. It's a long grind of cleaning and sterilizing, changing sheets and smoothing them out without even the smallest wrinkle. His hands grow steadier and more used to the routines, but Dean's eyes close or look away the same as they did the first few times, unable to hide behind routines and procedures. 

  
And time just stretches impossibly.

  
He waits and watches and observes. Looks for signs of improvement. _Anything._ He's pretty sure that on the other side of the impregnable wall between them, Dean is doing the same thing. Testing limbs and abilities to see what he can do, if there's anything new. Anything worse. Anything to worry about.

  
It's a Thursday afternoon when Dean turns his head for the first time in _decades_ and Sam almost faints, strips of tape between his fingers and glue residue on Dean's cheek. 

  
It's a Tuesday afternoon when Dean sits on his own, supported by a mountain of pillows pillaged from every chair, bed and couch in the house. 

Sam throws them a party. Bakes cupcakes with raspberries from the garden and cuddles the cat sleeping on top of Dean's duvet. Dean smiles, wearily and with a pale face, but he does. It's probably the saddest, happiest little party in the world.

  
The moment he can whisper words, Sam decides it's time for the tubes to go. 

-

  
It's still difficult. Still slow and unglamorous and undignified, but every little victory is a step closer to normality and regular life. As regular as it ever gets for the two of them. It's October before Sam realizes they've been here for _months_. Autumn rain slaps the windows and drowns their garden, and the forest behind them darkens with every day until all it is is a mass of black with streaks of yellow and red in the distance. Dean was upgraded to handling knifes a couple of days before, and he's in the kitchen, sitting on the walker Sam stole from a nursing home (holy fuck he's a bad person) and cutting beef into small cubes to make soup. Sam's cleaning out the fridge, frowning at the deeper end of the vegetable drawer where life is growing, and the bag of leftover medical equipment has been banished to the shed.

That night, Dean staggers up the stairs with the speed of a snail, Sam following close behind just in case. There's a pink duvet on his bed, and a purple one on Sam's, and it's kind of nice. Still stupid as shit, and Dean's still twenty pounds down on muscle weight, but getting there. Slowly.

  
He hopes Dean's face with a tube taped to his cheek wont be a default wallpaper in his head forever, because losing Dean, even thinking about it, makes his stomach squirm and the earth move.

  
The ancient house creaks and groans in the cool autumn air, and there are little clunks and bangs from Dean's room. Sam knows they're all just Dean getting into bed and knocking his head on the slanted roof. 

Tomorrow he'll take care of the hinges on the cellar door, and Dean'll sit on the ground and bitch about him doing it all wrong and then refuse to help before they go inside to escape a sudden rain shower.

Time slows down again, and their fear of the future returns to the normal foggy _nothingness_ it normally is, where random monsters and chaos turn up without warning. And really.. It's kind of nice.

-fin-


End file.
